


Love in a Time of War

by Stranger



Category: Babylon 5
Genre: F/M, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-21 02:33:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6034717
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stranger/pseuds/Stranger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Marcus is a romantic.  Susan Ivanova isn't.  They come to an agreement.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love in a Time of War

**Author's Note:**

> Happens after the episode "No Surrender, No Retreat" in Babylon 5's fourth season.  
> Many thanks to beta-reader Elaine Lazarov.  
> Warning: canonical for B5. Written ca. 1999.

Marcus Cole keyed open the door to his tiny cabin in brown sector, and stopped short in the doorway. 

"I let myself in," said the executive officer from his one, backless chair.

She was still in uniform, but she wasn't wearing the command face she'd had on continuously for the past few weeks. You noticed things like that when you were very observant. And in love. "Susan." 

The glance she gave him might have been irritation, but then, it might not. "Marcus. Please close the door."

He supposed discretion was the better part of valor. He approved if there was valor, or anything else, on offer here. "Of course." He closed the door and leaned back against it. "Ahhhum. To what do I owe the honor of this unexpected visit?" 

She raised an eyebrow, but remained otherwise expressionless. Maybe the privacy wasn't as good an omen as he hoped. She'd been subdued and often snappish ever since the end of the war against Shadows, victory celebrations notwithstanding. He hoped she wasn't going to snap anything of his. She'd hated being the rearguard defender ever since Proxima 3, and she must have resented him for being out in the ships, in the action.

Then she said, as if measuring out the words, "I want to know something. Something personal." 

Maybe good after all. Marcus' training came back on-line, after the shock of finding her here, and he realized she was tense but probably not angry. Unless she was hiding it. He took a step into the room, toward her, and then another. Susan Ivanova hid most feelings, but not forever. That was his only hope. He made a gesture, comically overdone to keep it from looking sincere. "Ask me anything."

She frowned at the levity. "Oh, hell. Not if you're in this mood. I didn't mean to bother you." She started to stand up.

That wouldn't do. He couldn't, quite, bring himself to naked honesty, but he could throw himself onto his knees beside the chair, which startled her into sitting back down. "Susan, please. Don't go away mad. Ask me anything." He did mean it. Why couldn't he ever sound like he meant what he meant?

She just stared at him. Better. Finally she said, "A while back... maybe too long ago for this to be important... you said something about liking four-poster beds."

A flame shot through him, lust or joy or both. "Well, yes. I'm afraid I meant what you thought I meant." He was just glad she'd remembered the point of the comment. He hoped he wasn't shaking visibly. "I'm sorry about the rotten timing. It was by way of comic relief just then, really it was."

She didn't react, but she stayed. "And you meant it?"

Yes. He'd meant everything about it. He just nodded, not looking at her.

"Do you still mean it?"

He froze.

"Marcus?" Uncertainty from her, for the first time. Ever.

His sense of self-preservation made him look up and catch her eyes. "Is this an honest question?" 

She'd been sitting rigidly still, but that must have been the right question. After the smallest moment, she relaxed and her hands, till now clenched on her lap, moved. One touched his shoulder. "Yes, it's honest. I want... to know what you meant." 

It was past time for clever phrases and hiding. If she wanted naked honesty, now was as good as later. "I was expressing an overwhelming willingness to make love to you. In any kind of bed you like. Did you have a preference?" 

There was a choked sound from her throat, and then, "what if I do?"

"Then I'll provide it," he said, sweepingly. "Now, later, as you like it."

She gave him a direct look that just missed being annoyed. "I never know what you mean."

"Susan, that was pretty clear, for two people who never say what they mean. You asked if I wanted to go to bed with you, and I said yes." He hadn't moved since she'd touched him. If he was wrong about any of this, he might never move again.

"What are you waiting for?"

He could move again after all. He picked up her free hand and looked up at her beseechingly. No, nakedly. "Will you make love with me?"

She closed her eyes and her hand clenched hard on his. "I don't mean... Oh, hell. Yes. That's what you call it."

"Then," he tried to smile, "What are you waiting for? Do you really want a four-poster bed?"

She looked around the tiny room with its monastically plain furnishings all designed for one person, at him on his knees beside her. "No."

"Anything?"

"Um." She looked at him. "You." She didn't move.

This wasn't going quite the way he'd fantasized. "Ah, Susan? Do you think I know what I'm doing?"

Her hand was still gripping his, and didn't loosen. "Maybe not. Neither do I. I meant..."

He tried to listen. She was by no stretch of anyone's imagination a starry-eyed lover, and if she'd been overcome by lust, she was hiding it well. What was going on? "Tell me," he prompted after a moment. He freed his hand and sat down on the only other piece of sittable-on furniture, the bed.

"You're the last of the great romantics. You don't want to hear this."

"Yes I do, if it's why you're here now."

"It is. It's that..." she swallowed. "Win or lose, this war will change everything. I've been thinking... never mind." She swallowed again, gazing at the gray bulkhead that contained the door. "I thought of you." 

"I'm flattered," he said. In truth, he was astounded.

"And we might not win," she said, eyes front.

"Don't say that."

"There's nobody else here, Marcus. We don't have to keep up a brave show of spirit. It's always possible to lose."

"I'd like to keep up the brave spirit, thank you."

She finally looked at him. "Optimist." 

"Pessimist."

"Right."

She appeared to think this was a conclusion, but she'd argued herself silent, and he remembered again that this wasn't, entirely, an abstract discussion. Lust and joy couldn't be ignored forever. "And this has to do you with you being here in my room how...?"

She glanced again at the narrow bed, at Marcus on it. "I thought... I've been thinking, sometimes, that you'd be an interesting person, if there weren't a war on."

"At least I'm not interesting just because there's a war on."

She suddenly grinned, the effect a little alarming. "That too."

"Mm." He wasn't sure he liked it, though he wasn't sure he was going to let it stop him. "What do you have in mind?"

"I'm not sure how to explain it. Not just a lay." His ears sang with blood and he thought: down, boy, later, soon; all before her next words. "But not," she grimaced, "romance." 

"Susan." She twitched at the word. "I'd take anything you offered, but I want... What I'd be doing is making love."

"Yeah. I know." Marcus could see that she was still tense in the chair, hiding something. Uncertainty, nerves, fear? 

"Does it bother you?" he asked.

"I'm not saying anything about love. I just want... to be here. With you. I can actually think about wanting something, with you." A wry smile. "Faint praise, maybe. I'm sorry. But it's the best I've done in a long time." 

"In a year and eight months," he said.

She was visibly taken aback by his precision. "How do you figure that?"

"That's how long I've been on the station. If you've had a single thought about love in all that time, it's the best-kept secret of the war." The bed was not a really comfortable seat, but he tried to look serene. He somehow didn't feel meditative.

"Oh. Maybe you're right."

Progress, he thought. She'd never said that before.

She looked at him and the bed again and went on, "I just want to feel you with me. Now, tonight. I thought you might like the same."

He was sweating eagerness, but tried for a cool tone. "You know it."

"Yes." she smiled, at him this time. "I know it. Marcus, am I taking advantage of you?"

"No." Saying, You could never, wouldn't prove the point very well. "Unless you'd like to think that." It was an effort to smile rakishly.

She didn't return it. "No games. No thinking. Just you." She still hadn't made a move toward him but she was looking at him openly now, not exactly lustful but... hungry? 

"Just me needing a little help with the basics." He quite honestly didn't know what a good move would be at this point. Let her start it.

"Oh, yeah." The look in her eyes changed slightly. "Was that for real?"

He tried for a mock-insulted tone to cover the stab of real insult that he felt. "Do you doubt my word?"

"Now that you mention it, no," she said, quite serious, voice gentle for once. She stood up, still eyeing him like a snake with a bird. "Come here, Marcus."

Slowly, he sat up straight. Stood up. Wondered what she was thinking. Was the ache between his legs important? Yet?

She pulled him up to her. They were the same height, or nearly, so the warm press of another body... of a woman's body, softer than he expected... fitted itself against him without difficulty. Just the feel of it was enough for this first moment. Instead of kissing him, she brushed her cheek against his, skin against skin, skin against beard, an edge of her drawn-back hair soft against his forehead. She mumbled, "Marcus, not love. Don't say love."

Dizzy with the closeness, the scent of her hair, he mumbled back, "I won't say it. But—" 

She cut his words off, a finger at his lips, eyes boring into his. "Just don't, okay?"

"I'll..." The body against him was warm, moving against him and his embarrassingly advanced erection in a way that showed she wasn't afraid of it.

He discovered that it was necessary to kiss her neck, her cheekbone, her right eyebrow. She knew. She'd let him show it. That was enough for Marcus. "May I say you're the most beautiful woman I've ever met?" 

Raised eyebrows, and a tiny smile. "That's a pretty good line, Marcus."

"I mean it."

She didn't answer that, just kissed him. Slowly. 

It was nice, rather like being at the center of a gyroscope. Nothing existed but their two mouths for a timeless space. 

Things had reached the stage where he had some vague idea that something else should happen — maybe they should try the kiss at another angle, or maybe he should think up something else encouraging to say? — when the comm-panel chimed. 

The mouth against his formed a very distinct four-letter word with implications he'd have welcomed under the circumstances of five seconds earlier, but then she said, "You'd better answer that." She stood back from him as he touched a contact that accepted the call, and he tried to look unruffled. It might be Entil'zha. 

It was Sheridan. "Marcus, we've had a signal from the Sarani system. There's a fleet of EA ships on the way there, and crew members on two of them have got word to us that they're ready to come over, if I can convince the captains. We need to get there fast. Meet me at Whitestar Three." 

It was an order. "Yes, sir. I, ah— how quickly?"

"We should leave immediately. Is there a problem?"

Marcus didn't look at Susan. He knew she would be wearing the command face, and he knew the only answer she'd accept. "No, sir. No problem. I'll be there directly."

The screen went dark. When he did look at Susan, she was looking grimly unsatisfied, but she was nodding. "You have to go."

"Sorry." He grimaced. "Awfully sorry."

"I agree. All points." She embraced him once, hard. "I'll see you later. Right?" It was a challenge.

"Right." There was a war on. He'd have to wait.

# # #


End file.
